Object-Oriented Robot Control and Development Environment

The use of robot technology in many military and private sector applications has been limited due to the application-specific nature of available robot hardware and control software. the use of robots with multiple sensors, kinematic redundancy, and mobile bases has been restricted because of the lack of a a flexible means to develop robust control algorithms for positioning, interaction forces, and high level tasks. We propose to develop an object- oriented, robot control and development environment (OORCDE) which provides a method for rapid prototype testing of novel robot hardware configurations and task requirements. The OORCDE provides tools that use descriptions of the robot hardware (sensors, actuators, and physical parameters) and the desired tasks to generate control algorithms which may subsequently be directly loaded into target processors to implement closed-loop control. The feasibility of the proposed concept will be established during Phase I by a demonstration of the methodology and by completing the preliminary design of the object-oriented modules and software, and simulating an illustrative example. In Phase II, a full scale system will be designed, assembled, and tested using existing sensor-based, mobile robot test beds.